Law victims and criminal justice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Law victims and criminal justice - Essay Example Although the courts serve as decentralised, semi-autonomous groupings of legal professionals, but that does not mean that victim support groups give up in confronting difficulties in predicting how they will follow a new law (Candace, 1993, p. 2). Victim support is criticised for it wishes to monopolise its' services provided to the nation. It is also said that this department is unable to tackle the problems of all of its victims (Duckett, 2003, p. 248). No doubt victim's expectations from the support departments and trial proceedings is to acquire justice while prosecuting and punishing offenders, but that does not mean that victim's sufferings should not be analysed in material form. Victims support organisations (VSO), groups and legal proceedings instead of claiming complete restitution for victim often seek justice alone. VSO does not consider reconciliation and mediation programs as alternatives to criminal punishment; therefore offenders' financial accounts are left untouched. VSOs does not support victim compensation programs, therefore victims who are ineligible for restitution through no fault of their own could be reimbursed at the same level, with their reimbursements paid from a pool of frees or restitution overages. VSOs go through the following processes while fighting for its' victim's justice. Methodological Issues: VSOs seeks evidence, including that from recorded crime, crime surveys, records of convicted offenders, accounts of emotional responses to crime, etc., on a socially constructed basis. Therefore what VSOs concentrate is the data on crime that reflects the way crime has been assembled and taken place. There is no concern about the improperly collected information that reveals the crime scene. However, the VSO team is criticized for working in the following way: Crime Scene Investigation: The VSO is quite popular in taking decisions whether or not to investigate the location of the criminal offense. In some 'incidents' VSOs are right in predicting that a crime has indeed been committed and it is a 'crime scene'. However, in many situations it is observed that VSOs fail to predict the seriousness of the crime and does not consider that one of the initial and primary tasks of the crime scene investigator is to determine whether or not a crime has been committed. In this context the blame must not be put on to VSOs alone as in many European countries including UK, National training centers only conduct short courses for creating Victim support officers and team. Resources, instead of basing on the complexity and seriousness of the alleged incident are dependant on their officers' decision. Crime scene is not analysed on the basis of its full potential. This is true as in many cases it is seen that the police, the field scientist, the laboratory scientist and the prosecutor instead of joining together to produce a set of facts that make it unreasonable to believe any conclusion other than the one the facts support, are giving individual facts. Therefore, the facts taken individually are not exposed to reasonable doubts, helpful in solving the crime.